Islamist Regimes Take Over UNESCO

The UN agency is currently dominated by the most oppressive regimes on education and culture. There is China, which recently let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. Then there is Iran, where a dean of journalism, Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide to avoid more persecution by the regime.

"UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to... rewrite global history." — Carmel Shama Hacohen, Israel's ambassador to UNESCO.

If UNESCO is really serious about reforming itself, it should immediately issue a statement against the Islamization of Turkey's Hagia Sophia Cathedral, a UN World Heritage Site.

Hit by the departure of the United States and Israel, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently welcomed its new Director-General, former French Minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay. Those who care about cultural diversity and Western civilization hailed her election, because the representative of Qatar's Islamist regime had come close to winning UNESCO's leadership race. But the real problem is that UNESCO has been abandoned to Islamist dictatorships. A battle to save the organization has begun.

Among the critics of UNESCO there is a tendency to dismiss this agency as "irrelevant". Yet, so long as UNESCO exists, the West cannot allow repressive regimes to dominate the world's highest body supposedly in charge of culture, science and education. Richard Hoggart, the British scholar who served as UNESCO's assistant director general from 1970 to 1977, once asked: "Should Unesco Survive?".

The UN agency is currently dominated by the most oppressive regimes in regard to education and culture. There is China, which in July let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. Then there is Iran, where a dean of journalism, Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide to avoid more persecution by the regime. Last week, the assistant director for Education of UNESCO, Qian Tang, was in Iran to advance "cultural cooperation" with the Islamic Republic, but the issue of cultural freedom in the Iran was not even raised by the envoy of the UN agency. There is also Pakistan, a country that has sentenced to death essentially for being a Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, whose condition has never even been questioned by UNESCO. There is Qatar, where a poet, Rashid at Ajami, was sentenced to three years in prison for a poem critical of the emir Hamad bin Khalifa at Thani.

Irina Bokova, then Director-General of UNESCO, is pictured speaking at China's official Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, on May 14, 2017. Two months later, the Chinese government let writer, poet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo die an agonizing death in prison, where he was serving an 11-year jail sentence for his support of human rights and democracy. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein - Pool/Getty Images)

UNESCO has become a grotesque forum, hosting shows such as that orchestrated by Cuba. Last June, Cuba complained of a minute of silence for Holocaust victims, but was able to hold another one for the Palestinians. At the opening of UNESCO's 39th General Conference in Paris, the United Arab Emirates' delegation placed a box containing a medal on the desk of each foreign delegation in honor of the UAE having sponsored the renovation of the conference hall. No box, however, was placed on the desk of Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen. These farces are nothing new at UNESCO. And they must end. The UN agency cannot allow the "uncivilized regimes", as Shama-Hacohen called them, to continue to bully and vandalize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

Islamic regimes launched a takeover bid for UNESCO by investing massive financial resources and political lobbying at the UN cultural agency. Qatar, the wealthiest state in the world per capita, provided extremely generous financial support. That is why a Qatari representative, the former Minister of Culture Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari, for days led the recent race for the leadership of UNESCO. The Simon Wiesenthal Center charged Qatar with bribing countries to win votes for the UN agency post. The Wiesenthal Center then launched an appeal to prevent Iran from becoming the head of UNESCO's executive board. Meanwhile, Turkey, another country with an Islamist regime that bullies culture and freedom, joined the executive board.

This "lobbying" has enabled those Islamic countries to form the most powerful bloc at UNESCO. As Denis MacEoin has previously explained:

"Of UNESCO's 195 member states, 35 are fully Islamic nations, another 21 are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and four are OIC observer states. That makes 60 who represent a bloc favourable to Muslim-inspired resolutions."

Qatar has been pivotal in sponsoring anti-Semitic resolutions. There was UNESCO's resolution denying Jewish history in Jerusalem, Islamizing historically Biblical holy sites by magic wand legerdemain, as Islam did not even exist until 600 years later. In a speech to the UNESCO General Assembly last week, Israel's ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama Hacohen said :

"UNESCO has been hijacked and abused as a tool for the persecution of Israel and the Jewish people, while concocting fake facts and fake history, meant to erase our history in Jerusalem and rewrite global history."

The Islamists' takeover of the agency does not affect only Israel. It undermines the universal noble goal of this UN agency, which should be the protection of cultural diversity, especially where it is endangered.

The Preamble of UNESCO's Constitution says: "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed". UNESCO is knowingly betraying its own message. It is allowing regimes that massacre the minds of men to take over the UN agency that claims to be precisely in charge of "defenses of peace".

Last March, UNESCO's then Director-General, Irina Bokova, expressed appreciation for Qatar's support with a $2 million loan as part of a commitment by the Qatari authorities to donate $10 million to UNESCO. UNESCO's headquarter in Paris hosted a forum sponsored by Saudi Arabia on "cultural and religious diversity". It was a capitulation to barbarism; Saudi Arabia tortures bloggers such as Raif Badawi, sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison. UNESCO also held a three-day event entitled "Saudi Cultural Days" with Saudi art, food, customs and dances. Saudi King Abdallah Ibn Abdul Aziz donated $20 million to the UNESCO Emergency Fund. Donations to UNESCO have been promised by other Islamic countries, such as Algeria, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Turkey.

The United Arab Emirates gave $6 million to UNESCO, while Kuwait gave $5 million. UNESCO now hosts the presentation of books such as The Foundations of Islam along with ISESCO, the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, whose director Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri met Flavia Schlegel, assistant director general of UNESCO, to advance the cooperation between the two agencies.

"The concept of Islamophobia masks the reality of the offensive, led by the Salafists, Wahhabis, and Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and North America, to re-Islamize Muslim communities — a prelude, they hope, to Islamizing the entire Western world."

Under UNESCO's previous Director-General Irina Bokova, the organization allowed the "State of Palestine" to join as a member, despite its not being a state and despite the Palestinians' clear failure to protect holy sites. Palestinians destroyed the Jewish holy shrine of Joseph's Tomb and attacked the holy site known as Rachel's Tomb, while Palestinian terrorists invaded the Christian holy site of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity. UNESCO also kept silent when Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist terror group governing Gaza, destroyed the ancient Anthedon Harbor, which includes the ruins of a Roman temple and archaeological remains from the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras.

UNESCO's concern for "endangered sites" -- a travesty of language used by these regimes to mask the Islamization of Hebron's Jewish cemeteries at the UN -- quickly disappears when it comes to Christian churches in the Islamic world. Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral of Christianity in Istanbul, was re-Islamized by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The muezzin's call to prayer resounded for the first time in 85 years since the country's former leader, Ataturk, turned the cathedral into a museum. If UNESCO is really serious about reforming itself, it should immediately issue a statement against the Islamization of Hagia Sophia, a UN World Heritage Site.

Novelist and filmmaker Zulfu Livaneli, Turkey's goodwill ambassador to the UNESCO, resigned in 2016; he accused the UN agency of hypocrisy for ignoring the destruction of a heritage site in Diyarbakir during clashes between the Turkish army and militants in his country's mainly Kurdish southeast. "To pontificate on peace while remaining silent against such violations is a contradiction of the fundamental ideals of UNESCO," said Livaneli, who had held the goodwill post to promote UNESCO values since 1996. More officials and personalities should take the same position protesting against UNESCO's silence on many other destructions.

New UNESCO chief Azoulay said last week that the US "empty chair" cannot last. The American boycott, however, is not a matter of time, but of substance. The US and Israeli boycott will last until UNESCO returns to its original mission.

When Pablo Picasso painted the famous frescoes at UNESCO's headquarter at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, UNESCO's founding fathers dreamed of the rebirth of Western culture after the horrors of the Holocaust and Nazism. Now the West, intimidated by physical terror and political ransom, is allowing UNESCO to be seized by regimes that hang dissidents, lash women, execute gays, imprison Christians and leave their own people illiterate.

When did the West cynically decide that education and culture were worth less than a barrel of oil?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

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24 Reader Comments

Josephine Bacon • Dec 11, 2017 at 09:37

UNESCO has always been corrupted by those in charge of it, from its first secretary M'Bou. I have met UNESCO employees who were utterly disgusted by the way it operates. It is as farcical as the UN's so-called Human Rights Council which ought to be renamed the Anti-human Rights Council.

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Joe K. • Dec 10, 2017 at 10:23

As the liberal govts of Europe cave to Islam, evil in the form the Islamist/Russia/China axis may just win in the long run.

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Badger • Dec 9, 2017 at 18:55

Why would anyone who cares about human rights want to belong to an organisation like UNESCO? I would like to see those countries, such as the UK, who claim to care about these things be rid of this rotting institution, leave it and cease paying money to it.

But of course that won't happen because if provides a platform for the smugly self-righteous and soft jobs with expense accounts for our pampered civil servants.

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Morton Winner • Dec 9, 2017 at 17:06

For decades, alleged "right wingers" wanted the U.S. out of the U.N., but the political and intellectual elites castigated them ceaselessly. It had been asked by many if our elites were part of a community devoted to our country's defeat through destructive change. We may repeat that charge now, even more urgently, by adding Islamic fascist barbarism to Socialism as the favored latest cause over which the elites may feel all fuzzy and warm and excited-unless and except if a miracle happens, and the elites decide to -finally-tell the U.N. and all it's corrupted agencies to get out of the U.S.. For such a miracle I would light a candle each night at this time, at this season. Americans, too, can act as Maccabeans, throw out the barbaric savages, and cleanse the New York site of the pollutions of so many years duration. And as the flag of freedom flew over Modiin, in164BCE, so too, in New York, our unsullied flag can once again fly, cleansed of the filth of anti-American and anti-Jewish hatred. Only the multicultural traitors would fail to applaud, or to light candles.

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NightandDay • Dec 8, 2017 at 21:45

"Islamic regimes launched a takeover bid for UNESCO by investing massive financial resources and political lobbying..."
--- as they are doing worldwide, buying their way into all spheres of public life. These public bodies in the West are ultimately betraying their own people, selling out for immediate gain whilst closing their eyes to the consequences.I'm ashamed at having once worked for such a spineless and perfidious organisation.

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Stella Brc • Dec 8, 2017 at 21:00

Qatar should help the other Muslims in need such as Syrian refugees instead of pumping millions of dollars into UNESCO. They and their cronies are seeking domination of the world and of course destruction of Israel. They wouldn't help " Palestinians " either, because they rather use them as a tool, to blackmail IIsrael and the world for their own gains. Where is the outcry of the Christians when the injustice is done to them in Arab countries. The countries that support UNESCO (and collude with haters )resolutions have capitulated and their leaders are spineless, immoral and impotent!

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Ron • Dec 8, 2017 at 15:42

UNESCO's resolution denying Israeli claims to Jerusalem and its associated holy sites by fabricating a Muslim connection to them is a blatant case of historical revisionism designed to cater to the interests of the UN's Islamist member states for political purposes. The attempt of Islamists and their apologists to rewrite history in terms more favorable to Islam has been ongoing for a number of years. In fact, it is something we Americans experienced under former President Obama. On several occasions, the President stated that Islam has been part of our nation's fabric since its founding in spite of the fact that the first Islamic center was not founded in the U.S. until the 1890's and the first mosque was not established until 1929. Also, Obama conveniently omitted the fact that our young nation's first experience with Muslims involved attacks on our ships by pirates along the Barbary Coast. Unless we have the courage to challenge these myths of Islamic historical contributions with the facts, Islamists will continue having success at rewriting history to improve Islam's unsavory image.

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Andrew T. Halmay • Dec 8, 2017 at 14:01

When a patient has advanced cancer, medication won't help. It has to be surgery. UNESCO and the UN is riddled with cancer in the form of a great number of nothing-burger 3rd World Muslim states corrupting the basic purpose of a U.N. Therefore surgery is indicated - drop it all. Let them regulate themselves and cheat each other and as Goldwyn once said, "Include us out."

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solange Silverman • Dec 8, 2017 at 13:05

The entire UN, United Nazis, is controlled by an Islamic, socialist and communist voting block, ever since they discovered they would have the majority vote if they joined forces.

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Bisley • Dec 8, 2017 at 12:26

Oppressive, tyrannical and lunatic regimes constitute the majority, and generally control the UN and most of its agencies. There is no way to reform anything associated with the UN with its present makeup. The best that can be done is to refuse to fund, or participate in what they're doing. The money now going to them would be better spent in opposing much of what they do.

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michele paskow • Dec 8, 2017 at 11:59

Excellent article. Thank you for presenting this research and making the world aware of how biased UNESCO is. It is deeply disturbing and sad that others follow along. Thank you for writing and speaking out.

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William Vanderbrink • Dec 8, 2017 at 11:25

UNESCO has been lost to Muslim control. The UN has been lost to Muslim control.
Western nations are completely responsible for this.
Western nations refused to create their own energy supplies. They became dependent upon the Muslim nations for oil to drive economies.
Those purchases of energy provide the economic tools these pathetic nations use to control numerous international organizations, including the UN/UNESCO.

I'm certainly glad the United States has become completely independent of these Muslim nations and actually export energy to other western countries, further diminishing their financial capabilities.

I'm looking forward to the day when the citizens of these countries are living in tents and traveling via camels, as they were prior to the discovery of oil in their countries.

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Frances Weingarten • Dec 8, 2017 at 11:08

Sadly, the western world doesn't seem to have the courage to stand up in support of the values and mores that UNESCO is supposed to represent. Instead, it allows countries such as Kuwait and other rogue Middle East countries, as well as the Palestinians, to destroy heritage sites and valuable artifacts as well as behave in other unacceptable ways. Many countries in the organization aren't living up to the beliefs and values of the organization and the fear shown by the western world is not acceptable. They must speak up for the original reason for the existence of UNESCO and not allow Middle East and other rogue countries to take control.

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tiki • Dec 8, 2017 at 10:51

Every institution with UN in front of it's name has been hijacked by Islamists.

When will it finally sink in!

These institution are only surviving on past glory.

Not one conflict or problem has been solved by them......on the contrary!

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Frank de Monbrun • Dec 8, 2017 at 10:49

It is the perfect time for the US to withdraw ALL funding from the UN, cancel its lease and eject its members from the country. Its name is farcical, its mission corrupted and most of its members terrorists. #UNout

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Edward Cline • Dec 8, 2017 at 10:47

The best solution is for the U.S. to leave the U.N. and evict it from our country. It can "resettle" in Patagonia, for all I care.

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e lee • Dec 8, 2017 at 10:40

A "religion" that destroyed the Buddhas of Afghanistan, the tombs of Timbuktu, and countless antiquities in Mesopotamia, has no business in this body. For those who read western authors, go read 1984 and reread the above sentence.

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Jeff Page • Dec 8, 2017 at 08:50

All well and good complaining about it now but it was those inside UNESCO that let this virtual takeover happen, no good whining now! The Muslim world wants nothing more but to expand to every area on the planet. Their goal is complete domination and for all to bow to Islam. This has been allowed because of rank stupidity and ignorance combined with a very generous portion of Political Correctness. Give a Muslim a crack and he'll force a larger opening, and it gets even larger when more Muslims are in place to force even bigger cracks wider.It seems as though Donald Trump is the only leader to recognise the danger, he is not afraid to speak his mind and is leading the fight back against this takeover now being undertaken by devious means. Unfortunately, the worlds other leaders are afraid, bound by the invisible but highly toxic disease of PC.

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John MacArthur • Dec 8, 2017 at 08:32

Most Islamic countries, in the Gulf in particular, have very few sites of any real historical value. The Kuwaitis have Failaka, reduced to rubble during the Iraqi invasion, the Saudis have Makkah - tourists always welcome, of course. The point being, because they have little that seems worth conserving in their own country, they have precious little initiative to contribute to conservation in someone else's. Furthermore, the Islamic prohibition on graven images means that they have little compunction in destroying or at least neglecting ancient artifacts, thus under no circumstances should such people be in positions of power in an organisation designed explicitly to protect them.

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Edward Cline John MacArthur • Dec 9, 2017 at 09:05

"...the Saudis have Makkah..." Non-Muslim Westerners are prohibited from visiting Mecca, or being anywhere near it. If a non-Muslim disguised himself as a Muslim pilgrim, and was caught at it, he would face the severest Saudi judgement, which could also entail death. See my novel, "The Black Stone," which dramatizes what happens when a Westerner violates the "no non-Muslims" rule.

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Alexander Scheiner, Israel • Dec 8, 2017 at 07:23

It is now the time, that Islam oriented and Islam dominated UNESCO declares the

GLOBAL ISLAMIC TERROR as a

WORLD CULTURAL HERITAGE.

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Nissim Levy Alexander Scheiner, Israel • Dec 8, 2017 at 12:35

Dearly agree with your comment. Would like to add:XXI Century technologies in the hands of VII Century stagnated cultures. Most dangerous combination.
The real terrorists are many world nations (including the Vatican) for accepting mediocrity and stupidity. They believe in the conspiracy and question reality.

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Albert Reingewirtz • Dec 8, 2017 at 06:59

What goes on at the UN goes on at UNESCO. Both are controlled by the largest voting block of Arab and other Islamic states not known for their democracy. The UN and UNESCO are just the loud speakers of Islam on a march to conquer the free world. Their prime target is the Jewish state of Israel as always. It is time to be kind and put both to sleep. The world will be better off without a world wide organization but since most are addicted to one why not start a UD, a United Democracies only may apply.

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Chandra Segaran • Dec 8, 2017 at 06:45

I strongly feel countries which do not subscribe to the current trend prevailing in UNESCO should leave UNESCO rendering it impotent. UNESCO's decisions shall not be binding on such countries that leave under protest. Seriously why should sovereign countries allow agencies of the UN to impose their will on them?As it is, take note all agencies under UN are hijacked by Islamist countries and are imposing their will via these agencies on non-Islamic countries. Better non-Islamic countries wrest these agencies from the Islamist or leave it letting it die a natural death. The UN has departed from its original path of noble principle and has become a tool of Islamist countries.

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